I have been working on a very large canvas to go on the living room wall in our home. Our living room opens to the front balcony which is up among the treetops of a beautiful leopard tree and lovely poinsettia tree. It is such a lovely retreat to sit on the deck and be surrounded by waiving leafy branches away from the rest of the world.

So when I was trying to decide on a suitable subject matter for this large painting, it took quite a while. Did I want to do a colourful abstract? I wasn’t sure and as I don’t paint in a traditional style, a landscape was out. One day whilst reading out on the deck, it finally dawned on me, paint my treetops!

I took some photos looking upwards into my treetops and then played around with them in Photoshop until I settled on a suitable composition.

First sketch the tree trunk and branches.

Then I had to paint in the tree canopy and all of the leaves. This took quite a while until I was happy with the composition.

It was quite a task to hang this large painting as it had to be hung in a very high position above our staircase. This involved ladders, tressels and the help of a builder; however it is finally up and looks great. What do you think?

We are currently travelling overseas and the weather of the last few days has resulted in our being inside, rather than out exploring the country.

It has always been my intent to try my hand at digital art. Therefore I have spent this spare time investigating and playing with my old PhotoShop digital art program that I have on my laptop.

I have had this program for over 10 years but to date have only used it to improve my photographs.

I obviously have a long way to go before I get any good at this method, it is fun but much more complicated than I thought. As I have only a mouse to use at the moment, I envision it will be mush easier once I get an up to date program plus proper equipment such as drawing tablet, pen etc.

Digital art is indeed an interesting medium and one which will sit along nicely with all the other mediums of art that I currently play with.

Anyhow here are two of my first efforts. I went with birds as they seemed the easiest without a tablet and pen. Having only a mouse makes it difficult.

I have decided to indulge my fascination with texture. I use whatever feels right at the time, pieces of paper, material and whatever else catches my imagination. I have been having such fun and look forward to where ever my new journey in this style takes me.

My new works are full of texture, depth and colour and my new pieces are all abstract in nature.

A lot of these pieces have been painted on recycled timber. I love to recycle wherever I can and Iuse pieces of found driftwood and old pieces of furniture. I also use pages from old books, pieces of material, broken zippers and whatever odd pieces I discover.